In 1967, lay preacher and land grant activist Reies López Tijerina founded the Alliance of Free Pueblos in the state of New Mexico. His goal was to return ownership of contested land grants to the … [Read more...]

This week Mark Guerrero’s guest on Chicano Music Chronicles is renowned American songwriter, percussionist and guitarist for Los Lobos and Latin Playboys, Louie Pérez. As co-founder of the legendary music group Los Lobos, Louie started primarily playing the Jarana, a small Mexican guitar and singing in the Los Lobos first acoustic album, Just Another […]

Listen to the children… As I write this, young people are in the frontlines of political change. High-school students, survivors of the Feb 14 massacre in Parkland, Fla., are confronting politicians, demanding action regarding gun control, and their fervor has spread nationally. The students’ foundational demand is that weapons like the AR-15 that was used […]

JAMES BALDWIN, RICHARD WRIGHT, THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE AND CHICANO CONSCIOUSNESS Our paths did not cross often, nor can I say we were friends. I first saw James Baldwin in Paris in the Fall of 1955 at the Café de Flore at the height of his recent success: Beacon Press had just brought out his Notes […]

New On Latinopia

Jalapeño Irish Soda Bread The sweetness of traditional Irish soda bread ingredients—raisins, buttermilk, some sugar—are richly complimented by jalapeño heat. Here’s a soda bread recipe from Ireland brought to the USA from Galway by Mary Patricia Reilly Murray and later transformed with her blessing by her daughter, Bobbi Murray, who added jalapeño chile. A real […]

The effort to organize farm workers under a union contract has been a long and difficult struggle. In 1965, César Chávez and Dolores Huerta created what would become the United Farm Workers Union. From the onset they faced many obstacles, not the least of which was how to get dozens of California grape growers to […]

Robert Francis Kennedy was shot in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968. The brother of President John F. Kennedy, Robert had just been nominated by the California Democratic Party as their choice to run for President of the United States. Dolores Huerta, Vice President of the United Farm […]